Article
Heterogeneous effect of coinsurance rate on healthcare expenditure
The article proposes a combination of finite mixture models and matching estimators to account for heterogeneous and nonlinear effects of the coinsurance rate on healthcare expenditure. The analysis with panel data for adult Japanese consumers in 2008-2010 and for female consumers in 2000-2010 demonstrates the presence of subpopulations with high, medium and low healthcare expenditure, and subpopulation membership is explained by lifestyle variables. Generalized finite mixtures provide adequate fit compared to loglinear model. Conditional average treatment effect estimations reveal the existence of nonlinear effects of the coinsurance rate in the subpopulation with high expenditure.
Government-subsidized theatres in Russia aim to increase both revenue and number of tickets sold. Achievement of such a goal is closely connected with study of theatre tickets demand function focusing on the estimation of price elasticity of demand. Previous papers studied price elasticity of demand for theatrical performances provide controversial results. Estimates of price elasticity varies with countries, theatres, segments of theatre audience and even with level of data aggregation. Ticket sales and price data aggregation at the national level or theatre level typically does not allow to control for the differences in produced cultural goods quality. Incorrect control or ignoring of a theatre, performances and seats quality leads to a problem of omitted variables and bias in price elasticity estimates. In this paper we employ disaggregated ticket sales data for four seasons of Perm opera and ballet theatre and estimate the price effect on the theatrical demand for various performance types and seats in the hall. We use censored quantile regression to estimate the parameters of theatre demand function. We reveal the weak elasticity of demand for Perm opera and ballet theatre. We also show that ignoring the limited capacity of the theatre hall, characteristics of performances and seats quality leads to biased estimates of demand function parameters.
Objective: the main objective of the paper is to systemize the approaches to reveal consumer preferences in the market if performing arts. We focus on the data used in empirical studies, main variables and their measures to determine the preferences and econometric methods of preferences identification.
Methodology: we use metaanalysis of recent papers on the estimation of demand for performing arts and identification of theatregoers’ preferences as main methodology for this research.
Results: the main result is the review of revealed and stated preferences methods, description of its applicability and critical analysis. We also systemized the main variables which determine the consumer behavior in the market of performing arts.
Area of application: this research is aimed to help theatres which are motivated to study the demand function on their services and the portrait of the theatregoer. This study may be applied for tuning the marketing management system and pricing strategy of a theatre.
Conclusions: study of the theatre consumer behavior may be done with the real sales data (method of revealed preferences) or with the consumer survey data (method of stated preferences). Demand and preferences of theatre consumers depend on characteristics of consumer, characteristics of hall and place in a hall, characteristics and date and time of play and performance. Individual preferences, their willingness to pay for attendance and price elasticity of demand is heterogeneous and should be taken into account when modelling the preferences and making management decisions.
Russian book market is one of the largest in the world in terms of new titles in print. However, this market is underexplored. There is no research dealing with an empirical demand or supply function estimation for this market. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the book demand function and to check whether this kind of demand is price and income elastic. On the basis of results retrieved, managerial recommendations are to be offered. For this purpose, the demand function for books is built and estimated both on the total sample and for particular literature genres. The peculiarity of the demand model estimation is the introduction in the model covariates indicating the book content quality such as the amount of people who gave rating on the website, average rating of the book from the website and the combined effect of these two variables. An empirical estimation of these factors influence has not been considered in the previous research yet. Model estimation was based on the data of one North-Western Federal District book retail chain. According to the estimation results, book demand is price inelastic; moreover, books are estimated to be luxury goods. The analysis of demand functions for separate genres suggests that the demand for each genre is price-insensitive. Only Russian and foreign prose, foreign fiction and poetry are luxury goods among all the genres analyzed. A foreign detective, Russian fiction and sentimental novel are normal goods, whereas Russian detective is an inferior goods. The results of the research might be of a particular interest for books retail chains and publishers